Stones compleatists will want to shelve this alongside the collected works of Spanish Tony, but ordinary civilians won’t get...
Languid memoir by the German-British noble who built a fortune for Mick Jagger and company, among other pop icons.
The prince assures us on several occasions that he didn’t come to the Rolling Stones as a fan. He doesn’t like rock ’n’ roll; though, as the scion of a dynasty displaced by history, he has a certain fascination with the power of the band, and especially Jagger, to hold an audience spellbound in the way that a certain Hitler fellow did in the Germany of yore. “I never played a Stones track by choice,” he writes. Yet, noblesse oblige; toward the end of the 1960s, once they’d amassed enough money—if only on paper—Britain’s rock stars began to hobnob with the upper crust, a group that returned the favor by advising them on how to spend their fortunes. In the case of Loewenstein, well known as a capable stockbroker and financial adviser, part of his counsel involved wresting the band from the talons of American promoter Allen Klein, whereupon the millions began to flow. Fans of the Glimmer Twins won’t learn much about the two here, though Jagger won’t like hearing that the prince believes that Keith Richards is the brains in the band. Loewenstein is a touch vague on the exact workings of building a rock-star fortune (he worked with Pink Floyd, Terence Trent D’Arby and other artists besides the Stones), which makes for good accounting but not terribly exciting storytelling. He is better when he turns his gaze elsewhere and goes into full gossip mode, as when he writes of another misplaced noble and his wife: “The Wrangells were often in Europe and by and large lunched on dry martinis and the odd olive.”
Stones compleatists will want to shelve this alongside the collected works of Spanish Tony, but ordinary civilians won’t get a lot from the prince’s pages.Pub Date: March 5, 2013
ISBN: 978-1-62040-034-0
Page Count: 272
Publisher: Bloomsbury
Review Posted Online: Dec. 1, 2012
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Dec. 15, 2012
An autobiography as toxic and addictive as any drug its author has ever ingested.
The legendary booze-addled metal rocker turned reality-TV star comes clean in his tell-all autobiography.
Although brought up in the bleak British factory town of Aston, John “Ozzy” Osbourne’s tragicomic rags-to-riches tale is somehow quintessentially American. It’s an epic dream/nightmare that takes him from Winson Green prison in 1966 to a presidential dinner with George W. Bush in 2004. Tracing his adult life from petty thief and slaughterhouse worker to rock star, Osbourne’s first-person slang-and-expletive-driven style comes off like he’s casually relating his story while knocking back pints at the pub. “What you read here,” he writes, “is what dribbled out of the jelly I call my brain when I asked it for my life story.” During the late 1960s his transformation from inept shoplifter to notorious Black Sabbath frontman was unlikely enough. In fact, the band got its first paying gigs by waiting outside concert venues hoping the regularly scheduled act wouldn’t show. After a few years, Osbourne and his bandmates were touring America and becoming millionaires from their riff-heavy doom music. As expected, with success came personal excess and inevitable alienation from the other members of the group. But as a solo performer, Osbourne’s predilection for guns, drink, drugs, near-death experiences, cruelty to animals and relieving himself in public soon became the stuff of legend. His most infamous exploits—biting the head off a bat and accidentally urinating on the Alamo—are addressed, but they seem tame compared to other dark moments of his checkered past: nearly killing his wife Sharon during an alcohol-induced blackout, waking up after a bender in the middle of a busy highway, burning down his backyard, etc. Osbourne is confessional to a fault, jeopardizing his demonic-rocker reputation with glib remarks about his love for Paul McCartney and Robin Williams. The most distinguishing feature of the book is the staggering chapter-by-chapter accumulation of drunken mishaps, bodily dysfunctions and drug-induced mayhem over a 40-plus-year career—a résumé of anti-social atrocities comparable to any of rock ’n’ roll’s most reckless outlaws.
An autobiography as toxic and addictive as any drug its author has ever ingested.Pub Date: Jan. 25, 2010
ISBN: 978-0-446-56989-7
Page Count: 320
Publisher: Grand Central Publishing
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Dec. 1, 2009
IN THE NEWS
This is not the Nutcracker sweet, as passed on by Tchaikovsky and Marius Petipa. No, this is the original Hoffmann tale of 1816, in which the froth of Christmas revelry occasionally parts to let the dark underside of childhood fantasies and fears peek through. The boundaries between dream and reality fade, just as Godfather Drosselmeier, the Nutcracker's creator, is seen as alternately sinister and jolly. And Italian artist Roberto Innocenti gives an errily realistic air to Marie's dreams, in richly detailed illustrations touched by a mysterious light. A beautiful version of this classic tale, which will captivate adults and children alike. (Nutcracker; $35.00; Oct. 28, 1996; 136 pp.; 0-15-100227-4)
Pub Date: Oct. 28, 1996
ISBN: 0-15-100227-4
Page Count: 136
Publisher: Harcourt
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Aug. 15, 1996
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
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